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Grammar is an area of English strikes both students and teachers. Many students think that grammar is important when we need to pass the exams. However, it’s not like that. Grammar is very important in every aspect of English, speaking, writing, listening and reading. Why is grammar so important for English learners? Here are the reasons. First, grammar is the thing that makes students know why we use the language this way. Second, grammar could help us to identify the sentences we make when we use it. Lastly, especially for teachers, strong foundation of grammar could help them to teach the students well. So what challenges Chinese students would face when learning grammar? I think there are too many that I can’t finish talking them in one passage. I’ll list three aspects of them today. They are parts of speech, tenses and passive voice. For parts of speech, we don’t usually think about it in our own languages. We just use the language naturally without thinking. Students are confused about the adverb and verb the most in English. Adverb appears in three situations generally. First, coming together with the adjectives; Secondly, coming with the verb; Third, coming with the whole sentence. From my point of view, adverbs categorizing is a good game for students to play when learning adverbs. Speaking of verbs, the first thing we should let the students know is that every sentence contains at least a verb. And verbs change with the time and status. The key is to help students remember the irregular verbs, like past tense and past participles. For tenses, which are most complex parts for students to learn since there are 16 tenses in English, and when we speak Chinese, we’re not used to change the tenses. Chinese students often get confused about the past tenses and present perfect. And they intend to use the present tenses to express all the things. Firstly, past tenses require us to use the past tense verbs, not to mention there are many irregular past tense verbs. Meanwhile, present perfect always comes with a verb participle, which in most cases, they look like the same. So many students would mix them. For an English teacher, the first thing they need to do is to tell them the structure of each tense. And how do we increase the diversity of their tenses-using. I think we could use more controlled activities to ask students use different tenses in different situations. For passive voice, the difficulty with it is familiar with the present perfect tense since its structure contains verb participles. And we Chinese students are not get used to using passive voice. However, passive voice is used widespread in English and we have to master it. I’ve known an interesting story of a politician. He says, mistakes were made. So other people wouldn’t think who made the mistake, actually it’s just him made the mistake, but he used the passive voice to avoid the blame from citizens to get more support. Expect this usage, passive can be used with a by phrase when the speaker or writer wants the listeners or readers to know who performs the action. What a magical grammar point, I think it’s necessary for students to use it well. In conclusion, grammar is an interesting thing for us to explore. Teachers shouldn’t be afraid of explaining it to students, and students shouldn’t fear it, either. The most important thing for a qualified teacher to do is to think how to make the grammar fun and acceptable for students. If they could make it, that would be a big success.
